William Hazlitt

Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.

The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate; but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces, silent and in tears.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating.